1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a digital camera for storing and accumulating taken-image data into a high-capacity server remotely located through the Internet so that desired image data can be, as required, downloaded from the server.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In the digital camera, the subject image taken by an imager device, such as a CCD imager, is subjected to predetermined signal processing. This produces still image data to be recorded in a compressed state onto a removable recording medium. When a reproduce mode is set, still image data is reproduced from the recording medium and outputted onto a LCD monitor through the decompression process. For such digital cameras, various recording mediums are used, including memory cards incorporating a flash memory having a capacity of approximately several tens of M bytes, floppy disks, small-sized hard disks, magneto-optical disks having a capacity of approximately several hundreds of M bytes, etc. These mediums are on rapid increase in their capacity. Today, they can store increased amount of image data as compared to that several years before.
However, the data size of one still picture has increased with recent increase of pixel count of the CCD-imager. Meanwhile, the speed increase of signal processing has enabled to take a motion image. As a result, the total data amount of an image to be recorded to the recording medium has also drastically increased. The user who is to take a picture is required to be conscious of if sufficient vacant capacity is available in the recording medium.